Last year (2012, at the time of writing this post) Spongebob's Pinapple house was redesigned. Why? Because it was physically, biologically, and mathematically impossible for it to exist in the way that the original designer designed it.

Mathematician Vi Hart posted an open letter/video to Nickelodeon demonstrating why the aforementioned "pineapple under the sea" was not capable of existing (beyond the fact that it was a cartoon).

Pineapple designer Kenny Pittenger responded with a blog post in which he admitted his faults and completely redesigned the Spongebob Pineapple which had remained stalwart for (as he puts it) "14 years, 8 months, and about 16 days".

Perhaps not "historical" in the traditional sense, but a show this influential does deserve some degree of respect, no? Especially considering it has become a cornerstone in culture and will undoubtedly be remembered in history books.

Also, the sources are first person so they are undoubtedly trustworthy and accurate.

Historical.... This count? - Yaa Asantewaa, Queen mother in Ghana who went and kicked ass against colonialists when the chiefs were ready to back out.
MY "Training Stuffs" and "Intellectual Indulgences" should have at least a few valid entries, but as I'm sure you know, many academic books are on the dear side, so feel free to pick second hand! Thanks!

I have a couple of books on my wishlist that counts. They're on the back page of my wishlist because most books I buy from Amazon are for class. I am a history major so I love knowledge as well!

The Russian Primary Chronicle is one of the most important documents of the early Rus period and early Russian history due to a distinct lack of sources that cover the same time frame. There is an interesting potential connection between the early Russian people and the Scandinavian people we know as the Vikings. What connects the Rus to the Scandinavian region is that according to the Laurentian text within the Primary Chronicle the various tribes of the Rus asked “‘Let us seek a prince who may rule over us and judge us according to the Law.’” They then in turn asked the Varganian Russes across the sea and asked, “‘Our land is great and rich, but there is no order in it. Come to rule and reign over us.’” The tribes chose three brothers and the entirety of the Rus people migrated to the areas of Novgorod, Beloozero, and Izborsk. Rurik, the eldest brother chose Novgorod and according to the text the Novgorodians are descended from these Varangians, but before that they were Slavs.

There are some distinct issues of the Primary Chronicle that have led to conflicts within the academic community. One of the problems stems from when and who wrote the Primary Chronicle. Recent insights into the authorship of the Primary Chronicle have led to a hypothesis that the Chronicle is not a homogeneous book by one author as was previously believed. With this in mind, some aspects of the Chronicle are to be taken under extreme scrutiny. Nonetheless, if correct, The Primary Chronicle indicates that people of Scandinavian descent created a dyansty (the Rurik Dynasty) that lasted until 1458 with the death of Tsar Fedor.

I have one book on my list qualifies, California in the 1930s: The WPA Guide to the Golden State. It is around $12 used which is fine by me.

I am a historical tour guide for the Barstow, California area and this is one of my favorite stories from my tour. On September29, 1929 a number of interesting people got off a train at our Harvey House train station for a brief stop. First off was the fourth richest Punjab of India and his entourage. Next came the head of the Woolworth's chain of stores and an assistant. They were scouting locations for stores in the west. An finally the Former Chancellor of the Exchequer of England.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer is kind of the financial officer of England. As such when the country was hit by the Depression he was blamed and fundamentally fired. He also lost most of his own assets in the Depression. He then went on a speaking tour of the United States to recoup his losses. This was the only time that he traveled on the West Coast. At the train station he washed up and wrote a letter to his wife relating meeting William Randolph Hearst and Charlie Chaplin. After a couple of hours everyone re-boarded the train and headed east. The sad thing about the Exchequer 's tour was that it didn't make any money until something lucky happened to him in New York, he got hit by a car. He wrote about the experience in a humorous piece in one of the papers that was so popular that he gave extra talks about the experience and he made a little money off that.

The Exchequer then returned to England and got back into politics. He did pretty well for himself and during World War II he became a bit more well known, he was Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

During the Cold War, there was a plot that never came to fruition that involved shaming the Soviets by including condoms in humanitarian relief packages snuck into East Berlin. The plan? Send in "large" labeled condoms that were actually small sand mediums to make the Soviets feel inadequate.

Molasses! Mmm molasses, delicious. But also deadly. On January 15, 1919 there was a terrible accident in Boston. A tank holding millions of gallons of molasses burst. The giant wave of molasses then swept through the city at around 35mph. Killing 21 people and injuring another 150. Animals died, buildings were destroyed and in places there were 2-3 feet of standing molasses. At the peak, the wave of molasses measured approximately 155 feet wide and 25 feet tall. The clean up took two weeks and 300 people. But what else were they going to do? I doubt anyone in the area was able to get much work done until it was cleaned up. The company that owned the tank was held responsible and forced to pay out $600,000.00 worth of damages. Apparently the company attempted to blame the accident on “anarchists” but the reality seems to be a combination of fermentation and shoddy construction.

However, this is not the only large scale molasses accident in the United States, in fact in September of 2013, in Hawaii there was another accident involving large amounts of molasses. This time a pipeline leaked, pumping molasses into the ocean and killing off large numbers of marine life. Hard to imagine what the impact would have been had this one occurred on land too.

I hope that was interesting! I have several history related books on my Ebook list because I love history and I love this contest! What a great idea, learn all the things!

Second, I learned about it when I was first researching the Boston molasses flood a couple months ago. I figured it had probably happened again, little did I know it happened recently. It got very little attention, I'm not sure why. It's big news and it's also kind of odd, you'd think that'd make headlines. Alas the things I think are worthy of headlines often aren't. Pfft news!

and some of the shit that does make headlines is so ridiculous!! it seems like half of cnn these days is about things that happen on reddit-proper, (i like to think of RAOA as a small awesome offshoot of the massive and often times douchey rest of reddit).

H. H. Holmes, just everything about him is crazy. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._H._Holmes

That's not really a fact but you should read it anyway. If you need a fact, there's a train station that, during the battle if Stalingrad, switched from Russian control to German control 14 times in 6 hours

I think a few books on my wishlist counts, I'm specifically looking into German classics, or works that I'm familiar with, translated into German.

Here's a few interesting facts about Canada:

In 1755, the English expelled the French from Nova Scotia (most eastern province). The French were sent back to France, down to Australia (where England sent a lot of political prisoners) or to the United States. In the States, the French that settled there after the Great Deportation settled into New Orleans, and created French Creole.
My source

About 4/5 of the population of Canada lives within 150 km [93miles] of the US boarder, due to the fact that it's extremely cold up north and building on permafrost is expensive. Did you know that if you live above a certain latitude in Canada you get a tax credit for doing so?